A Universe of Terms: Religion in Visual Metaphor (Religion and the Human)

How can we foster a more inclusive, responsible, and communicative future? What ifillustrated scholarshipis one way to get there?

Organized around eight terms in the study of religion, the groundbreaking, multifaceted bookA Universe of Terms: Religion in Visual Metaphor combines text and image to examinethe human as both catalyst of crisis and principal agent for its mitigation. Mona Oraby and Emilie Flamme―a professor and an illustrator―were spurred to create an alternative form for scholarly communication, one that stages conversations between thinkers who likely would not all find themselves in the same room.This graphic nonfiction book acknowledges the significance of certain terms to the social sciences and the humanities, narrates their limitations, and shows why we need a structure and style for thinking them otherwise. It further urges the iterative rethinking of any new terms this exercise yields.Through its unique visual lexicon,A Universe of Termsexplores religious media in postcolonial and secular contexts, performances of religious feeling, the political economy of religion,sacredpresence, and human striving amid social inequality and climate change.

Beautifully illustrated and inspired by a range of media from graphic novels to podcasts,A Universe of Termsis a visual experiment, one that invites readers to think again and anew about how the visual is integral to thought.

Indiana University Press is proud to present an open access edition of this work: https://publish.iupress.indiana.edu/projects/universe-of-terms/resource/a-universe-of-terms. (This book is intended to be viewed as a double-page layout. For optimal viewing, we recommend opening the document in Adobe Acrobat Reader. If opening the document in a different program, adjust your settings to allow for double-page viewing.)

Mona Oraby is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Howard University and Editor of The Immanent Frame, a digital publication of the Social Science Research Council that advances scholarly debate on secularism, religion, and the public sphere.Emilie Flamme is a graduate of Amherst College, where she double majored in Architectural Studies and Russian. She is a researcher and illustrator based in the United States and France.